We just got official confirmation from motherboard and chipset manufacturers in Taiwan -- AMD has moved the official launch date of Athlon 64 DDR2 up two weeks to May 23, 2006. AMD roadmaps have previously put the AM2 launch at June 6, 2006 (during Computex 2006), but since motherboards and CPUs are already completed, the launch will be pushed up. AMD insiders tell us Conroe's launch date was also a factor in pushing the AM2 launch date up, though even we do not know the exact date Intel's Conroe will launch.

Well, AMD DOES have the performance crown right now. Yes, I know it looks like it'll get its ass handed to it by Intel's Conroe but the fact that Intel felt the need to show performance previews so far in advance should tell you something about what it has on the market currently. I was actually quite surprised to see these performance previews so early, since (it seemed to me) it looked like a desperate damage-control measure rather than a cool and calculated decision that we've come to expect from Intel (example, x86-64 was in Prescotts from the very beginning but Intel decided to try to stay the course and only embraced it after it looked like there was no other choice, and reluctantly at that, yet here they are basically saying "our current products may suck but look at our future ones").

I must say that I've pretty much lost interest in single-socket and two-socket systems (though 2-way Clovertons could be interesting, if they can outperform Opterons--which may not be the case)...